To run away from it all…

Sometimes we feel like just running away from it all – “leave tonight or live and die this way”, as Tracy Chapman once sang. But what happens if we do? This is the story of my past few months…

I won’t pretend it has been easy – the past few months have felt like a rut that I just couldn’t get out of. Working a lot, stressed about money and administrative crap, the approaching Melbourne winter… it felt like all the things that I had been trying to escape were beginning to catch up with me. I wrote about it on more than one occasion too – read this, or this.

I even began to wonder if I’d had enough of moving around the place – either travelling, or uprooting my life every 6 months and shifting to another continent. The trip from Melbourne to Lahore, via Singapore, Dubai and Faisalabad was a long and tiring one – by the time I got back I felt like I had finally hit a wall. A stagnant writers’ block plagued me, and I felt directionless.

Arriving in Faisalabad

I had planned a trip to Pakistan’s northern areas for 10 days, travelling through some of the most mind-blowing scenery the planet has to offer – but I struggled to get excited about it. Sure, I knew what lay ahead of me was all spectacle and wonder, but I found it difficult to rekindle the fire which powered me through 40 countries in the years past.

Mastuj orchards

It was only on the fourth day of my trip, in a field in Mastuj, near Pakistan’s northern border, that it occurred. After four days alone (although you’re never really alone in Pakistan) I began to feel free. Free of all the duties, responsibilities, concerns and issues that plague our daily lives. And free from the shackles of my reality, I was able to dream again. Inspiration, beauty, creativity, colour, lexis and the future all rushed forth. I started thinking of things to write, to photograph, ideas for the future. My writers’ block disappeared, and the rush was palpable – I committed to recording everything that came into my head over the proceeding days.

In the past few months, in Australia, I had watched an excellent TED Talk about introversion, and how introverts require time alone in order to be inspired, and to understand. The speaker Susan Cain posits that some people, whether they consider themselves introverts or not, require venturing into the world alone in order to function at their creative best. She mentions Moses, Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad ﷺ as examples of seekers who needed solitude in order to experience their epiphanies. While I certainly don’t claim to be among any these lofty figures, I feel that my experience somehow exemplifies her point – as Cain puts it; “no wilderness, no revelations”. More than recharging my batteries, my holiday has set me up for my next year of writing.

A writing retreat sounds indulgent, but it really isn’t when one considers the fruits which it could bear. So I encourage you all, somehow, and somewhere, to run away from it all once in a while. You never know what you might find.

Do you find time spent alone to be beneficial? Comment below!